


To Trust in One Another

by bluespring864



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (Obviously), (right that's already a tag), Angst and Drama, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale is Bad at Feelings (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a bit of an Idiot, Crowley suffers in silence, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Gen, Idiots in Love, M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 04:03:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19804336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluespring864/pseuds/bluespring864
Summary: “Now, don’t be foolish, Crowley, you’re a demon. Demons don’t love.”[… ]Aziraphale remembers this conversation, a long time later, with a quiet sort of horror.It’s a tricky situation, and Aziraphale only has himself to blame for this one.





	To Trust in One Another

**Author's Note:**

> All right, so I fell headfirst into this fandom after watching the series last week, started reading the stories on here and stopped again very quickly because I'd started writing, and I don’t want to unconsciously borrow from other stories. I very much look forward to reading everything there is to read over the next few weeks!  
> With how long this fandom has been going, I quite possibly still repeated something that’s already there, somewhere. I hope you don’t mind.  
> There’s also no way that no one has used “It’s a hard life” as inspiration and/or title yet, it just fits them perfectly (as do so many Queen songs).  
> If you've got something to say about this story, please comment! If I don't get any comments, I'd still consider writing this wonderful pairing a weekend well spend, but a little bit of feedback would be much appreciated :-)  
> Also, please feel free to point out any English mistakes or typos you might stumble upon. I've been writing in English for a while now, but this is unbetaed and I'm sure I've missed things.  
> This is written very much with Sheen's and Tennant's interpretations of the characters in mind. I've been a DT fan for a long time, but hadn't seen all that much of Michael Sheen before and oh my, he's lovely. Did anyone else binge his appearances on Craig Ferguson and grin stupidly because they had _grapes_ at some point? (not crêpes, but still ;-)) Just me? Ok.  
> Well, enough babbling, I'm nervous as always that this is utter rubbish, but am posting it now before I've changed everything five times (and maybe, with how much is being posted in this fandom recently, no one will read it anyway, so I should stop fretting). Here we go.

“Now, don’t be foolish, Crowley, you’re a demon. Demons don’t love.”

Aziraphale had said that, a few thousand years ago.

He hadn’t understood, then, how Crowley could look so hurt.

It was the truth, after all.

~---~

Aziraphale remembers this conversation, a long time later, with a quiet sort of horror.

It’s a book that makes him understand, because of course it is.

He is indulging in another of those cheap priest-getting-tempted-by-woman-stories that no one is ever, in all eternity, to know he is enjoying. That Crowley especially isn’t to know he is enjoying.

It had started with a sort of “read about temptation to better resist it”-reasoning, this habit, and now Aziraphale has been telling himself for several centuries that that is still what he is doing.

But perhaps it never was.

Perhaps, if he were to be honest with himself, he simply enjoys those silly stories, gets a thrill of the forbidden out of them.

For a celestial being of light, Aziraphale is surprisingly apt at being dishonest with himself.

Anyway, the book is unremarkable, the story entirely predictable.

But then, the woman says the following to the priest, who is tearing himself apart over what he is doing, and calls what is going on between them ‘evil’.

“Oh, honey,” she says (unnecessarily, the woman is a rather caricatural prostitute, just to make the whole thing a bit more shocking, Aziraphale supposes, but that’s not the important bit…)

“Oh, honey, love isn’t evil. It’s not divine, either. It just is.”

It’s certainly not high literature, and of course the thought has been expressed in poetry and prose forever, but something about the direct, unadorned words makes Aziraphale get it for the first time.

Humans, at least quite a few humans, truly seem to believe that.

That love is neither of heaven nor of hell, but something unique.

And humans are wrong ninety-nine percent of the time, aren’t they, they get it so horribly wrong over and over again, but Aziraphale has the sneaking suspicion that this is not one of those times.

At precisely that moment, he remembers.

_“You’re a demon. Demons don’t love.”_

Aziraphale weeps for a night and a day.

Not a very long time, in the measure of eternity, but a long time for an at least outwardly human body to do so.

He feels utterly depleted, knows that his body needs more than miracled water desperately (and it’s not exactly healthy, either, the sort-of-brackish stuff he manages to conjure into his body in the state he’s in) but he is weak, lethargic, can’t manage to get himself back on his feet.

Doesn’t even try, honestly.

That’s how Crowley finds him.

~---~

“Aziraph – What have they done to you?”

Despite his dry-as-desert throat, Aziraphale laughs hysterically, because “they” had done nothing.

His mind is woozy, but still he knows exactly who Crowley means. The demon always blames heaven for everything bad that happens to him.

His laughter doesn’t exactly seem to calm Crowley, who’s suddenly all over him, hands running down Aziraphale’s arms, then settling on the sides of his face with a featherlight touch for a second, as if to check everything is intact.

With an impatient gesture, Crowley throws his shades to the floor and fixes Aziraphale in an intense X-raying stare (X-rays have already been invented, but Aziraphale, even though his addled mind does not know it, has just used the concept metaphorically for the first time).

Under that yellow stare, the angel comes back to himself a bit.

He averts his eyes, takes in the fact that he’s sprawled on the sofa, that his demon is kneeling in front of him.

“You’re dehydrated,” Crowley concludes, his brow furrowing, his eyes darting furtively over the tear tracks on Aziraphale’s cheeks. He adds, after a second,

“Have you been trying to miracle that away?”

His voice sounds calm, careful, as if he’s a nurse speaking to somebody who’s very ill.

Nevertheless, Aziraphale hears a reproach.

“Yes?” he mumbles.

“Oh, you idiot,” Crowley hisses, so, indeed, definitely a reproach, even if there isn’t really any bite to the words.

A glass appears seemingly out of nowhere, nudging gently at Aziraphale’s lips, and its only now as the demon sinks back down to the floor that Aziraphale notices he had left him for a few seconds.

“Slowly.”

Crowley’s hand catches over his on the glass, prevents him from taking big gulps.

The hand stays for a moment, even when the glass is empty.

It makes Aziraphale recall the reason for his tears.

He swallows down the fresh ones and whispers,

“Oh, Crowley, I’m so sorry.”

“What for?”

Crowley looks puzzled, and very alarmed again.

There are so many words Aziraphale could use.

 _Sorry for making assumptions, for being patronising, for dismissing you, for being wrong, for_ hurting you _._

He doesn’t say any of them.

Just can’t bring himself to.

Maybe a look can convey…?

The only thing that achieves is to make Crowley scramble for his shades, which is of course the last thing he wanted to happen.

The demon’s eyes had been an almost warm amber colour just now.

Now all Aziraphale sees are those damn black discs.

He’s being grabbed by the shoulders again, roughly this time.

“Listen. Whatever this is about, in my book, you have nothing to apologise for.”

Crowley even manages a winning smile as he says it, lifting both eyebrows playfully but sounding sincere nevertheless.

He has just made Aziraphale’s guilt a thousand times worse, but even with those unique eyes hidden behind sunglasses, Crowley’s whole face looks so hopeful that the angel can’t go back to the apology he was trying to formulate.

Instead, he smiles lightly, hopes it doesn’t come across as too melancholy, and says yes to everything Crowley asks of him for once.

The demon, for his part, catches on to that quickly, just as Aziraphale expected.

What he didn’t expect was for Crowley to grow very tame in his requests very quickly.

 _He’s protecting me_ , Aziraphale thinks, and even as he smiles, his heart tears itself into a million pieces.

~---~

When the antichrist comes along, the angel has been avoiding his demon for quite a while.

It’s nearly always Crowley who seeks him out anyways, but Aziraphale can make that easy or difficult for him.

With the years passing, Aziraphale has almost convinced himself that he got his supposed epiphany all wrong.

Of course Crowley is not in love with him.

What a ridiculous notion.

Well, Crowley has always been a bit… _flirty_ , from, the beginning, which at first Aziraphale didn’t even recognize as such. And when he did, he put it down to – not necessarily devilish temptation, it rarely seemed malevolent enough for that; more like an automatism of demonic existence.

He never would have suspected anything more if it hadn’t been for that one conversation, remembered so dramatically many many centuries later.

_They watched the city burn in silence, standing on the walls together, the scene reminiscent of their first meeting. There had been fire in the distance, then, too, if a flaming sword could count as such._

_This time round, Aziraphale had been quietly moaning about all the knowledge, artefacts, and, most importantly, all the beings destroyed by the fire, caused by two close friends turned bitter enemies, who unfortunately happened to have substantial armies at their disposal. The whole situation had gotten spectacularly out of hand, even for a pair of humans, and the angel couldn’t be but suspicious that someone had had their own hand in that._

_Seeing as he’d met that hypothetical someone right here._

_“Are you sure you had nothing to do with this?”_

_At first, Crowley only raised his eyebrows at him in response. The glasses of that period had been rather small (it had been more than a bit too early for having glasses at all, to be honest), and a penetrating side-eyed stare hit Aziraphale full on._

_He got flustered, like he always did when Crowley showed him with a look that he thought he knew something the angel didn’t._

_Matter-of-factly, and (considering the mayhem in front of them) not remotely gleefully enough for a demon, he then stated,_

_“They did it for love.”_

_It was early days, still, without even a hint of the ‘arrangement’ to come, and Aziraphale’s belief in the goodness of love had very few nuances to it at that point. He wasn’t as blind as to have completely overlooked the closeness of the two princes whose armies were now going up in flames. That closeness had perhaps been just a tad stronger than that of two friends, but Aziraphale had already become adept at_ mostly _overlooking things, and anyway it could never have been love that would have led to… this._

_With an almighty crash, the watchtower to the left of them fell in on itself._

_Aziraphale jumped a little, then composed himself, peeking through the corner of his eye to see that, yes, of course, Crowley had noticed._

_He drew himself up to his full height, made himself almost as tall as the demon._

_“Preposterous. I don’t believe it. And what would you know about that in any case?”_

_“Oh, I know about being in love.”_

_The way he’d said it should have given Aziraphale pause. Would have, later on. But it was early days._

_“Now, don’t be foolish, Crowley, you’re a demon. Demons don’t love.”_

~---~

As daunting as this Armageddon thing is, it is also a lot of fun.

Not that Aziraphale would ever admit to that out loud.

But it really is.

Crowley playing the nanny, for a start.

And also that time when the boy… well, it was Crowley who… or when the ambassador’s wife… on Crowley’s insistence…

Oh, who is he kidding, everything that’s fun comes back to Crowley.

Angels aren’t supposed to have fun, but the days when Aziraphale would blame having fun on his demon are long gone.

No, no, he is rather tempted to thank him for it.

Why has he even kept himself apart?

Crowley reminds him so well of what his mission is, something he tends to forge… _temporarily misplace_ when he’s on his own. Never mind that Aziraphale has been acting a bit contrary to his mission quite often over the centuries, in the name of their little ‘arrangement’. Crowley is and ever has been a contradiction, who brings out the impossible in him, and Aziraphale is fascinated by that.

Maybe fascinated isn’t quite the right word…

It’s certainly heavenly, to be spending time with Crowley again.

No, actually it’s better than that.

Everything could be perfect, therefore (well, except for the world possibly ending, that’s a big worry, but everything could be perfect _between the two of them_ ) if it wasn’t for that age-old conversation and Aziraphale’s still relatively newfound interpretation of it from about a hundred years ago.

He truly has done his best to forget that now, what with trying to keep his distance since. He’s failed sometimes, of course. A few moments stand out, like Crowley saving him _and_ the books in that church that one time. Crowley going into the church for him in the first place…

And then, yes, Aziraphale brought him the holy water, guilted himself into it.

But other than that, Aziraphale has really truly kept apart more and he has relegated those far-away moments that tell him something he doesn’t want to know to a consecrated burial ground somewhere in the deepest depths of his brain. And that’s where they should stay, even now that they’re back together. So to speak.

Crowley, however, makes it bloody difficult for him.

What with his “we can run away together”, and his “my best friend” and, when it’s almost over, his “you can stay at my place, if you like”.

For the most part, Aziraphale panics and overreacts completely. On the last occasion, he finally manages to only weakly protest and then keep his stupid mouth shut.

He’s not entirely sure whether he’s relieved or disappointed when they come back to a completely intact bookshop the next morning, which leaves him with no reason to make use of Crowley’s hospitality for more than one night.

Crowley insisted on taking the sofa, and Aziraphale had not known what to make of that. In the end, he decided to forego sleep and watch films with Crowley the whole night.

On the couch, but together.

Then, in the morning, they switch faces – and bodies, which, surprisingly, makes Crowley squirm a lot more than him. Well, Aziraphale supposes he has gotten the better deal out of this. What with Crowley being all thin… and fit… and handsome. Poor Crowley, really, having to inhabit this tired old _soft_ form.

“It won’t be for long,” he tries to reassure the demon, who’s looking back at him with Aziraphale’s own face on.

Bit strange, that.

His face makes an unfamiliar expression in response to his words (Crowley in Aziraphale’s face, just to be clear, because, oh, this really is confusing). The eyes, particularly, show a heretofore unknown expression. But then he so rarely sees Crowley’s eyes.

“Won’t be for long,” he repeats, because he has a tendency to repeat himself when he’s nervous, “you’ll just have to make do with it for now.”

“Shut up.”

It’s so unmistakably Crowley, even with the other face on, that Aziraphale makes them practice being each other for a few hours.

It’s mostly unnecessary, though. As soon as they make the effort, they can easily pass for the other.

Turns out you get to know each other a bit over six thousand years.

Aziraphale says as much, and Crowley just huffs.

~---~

The stay in hell is disconcerting, even after Crowley had briefed him quite extensively on what it would look like, smell like, sound like. Who he’d meet.

It is disconcerting because of the way they act down there. Not that Aziraphale had expected any different, really, but it is a stark reminder of all the ways in which Crowley differs from the rest of the lot.

The whole time, he has to keep his thoughts from straying to what has to be going on ‘upstairs’ at this moment.

It helps a bit that Crowley’s supposed to be cool. Like all cautious people, Aziraphale has always wanted to be cool in the abstract sense, without sacrificing any integrity or niceness for it. Now that he’s freed by playing a role, he finds himself asking for a rubber duck and acting quite irreverently towards the archangel Michael.

It’s so much fun that he feels the holy water sting just a little bit.

Or maybe that’s only a figment of his overactive imagination.

Of course, he loses the coolness all too soon, changing back into his own body.

“I wouldn’t have minded this for a bit longer. Your body really agreed with me,” he says a few minutes after they changed back, on the way to the Ritz, and Crowley makes one of his complicated faces, but replies nothing more than,

“Oh, did it?”

Belatedly, Aziraphale blushes. There had been layers of meaning there he had not been aware of when he spoke.

Yes, the coolness is definitely gone for good.

Over the course of the evening, he tries to wrangle out of Crowley how he was treated upstairs, but the demon remains monosyllabic on the subject.

When Aziraphale insists, he gets a remark about ‘blowing hellfire towards your holier-than-thou boss’, but it’s said very unenthusiastically.

He gives it up for now.

In the end, they toast to the world, at Crowley’s initiative, but even with a happy smirk, his demon still seems guarded somehow.

Aziraphale feels pretty awkward for being so free with his smiles throughout the evening, but he is simply inconceivably happy and he can’t keep that in.

Always had to wear his heart on his sleeve, he did.

He falls rudely back to earth (figure of speech only, though he is one of the very few who knows what that feels like in actuality) when Crowley deposits him in front of the bookshop and says tersely,

“Right, back to normal then, isn’t it? See you around.”

And with that, he’s gone.

~---~

It takes Aziraphale next to no time to assess that Crowley is brooding.

He has no idea why.

The world has begun again, and Crowley has nothing better to do, it seems, than to hole himself up and complain constantly, about everything.

It’s almost as if he’s trying to drive him away.

Drive him away, because, for the first time, it’s always Aziraphale seeking the demon out.

Crowley doesn’t show up anymore and Aziraphale hadn’t known how much that would bother him.

It’s something he’d taken for granted, he realises.

A case of _don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone_.

He remembers dissecting that song with Crowley when it first came out and disagreeing with him about the voice of the singer.

“Heavenly,” he’d said.

“Earthly,” Crowley had replied.

In hindsight, he is inclined to agree.

He used to find it slightly worrying in the past when they liked the same music. That feeling is gone, too. Having lived through the end of the world does wonders for your regular worry levels.

Aziraphale feels a certain serenity now, while Crowley walks on eggshells around him. No, that’s not quite it, because as careful and unsure as he seems, the demon quite often provokes him on purpose, seems to wait for Aziraphale to snap, to push him away.

It so confuses Aziraphale who has just… come to terms.

With a few things, really.

And didn’t Crowley insist that they were on ‘their side’ now? Why does he want the ‘back to normal’ then?

It isn’t even ‘back to normal’ with the way Crowley keeps acting.

Slowly, but surely, Aziraphale is getting annoyed.

It’s quite a feat, to truly annoy an angel, but Crowley has six thousand years of experience in this, too.

The angel stays very patient for very long, though, because he realises at some point that Crowley has always gone rather prickly when Aziraphale was simply being nice. Or what he thought of as simply being nice. He’s not at all sure anymore that was the only thing he was doing.

Apt at lying to himself, if you recall.

But not anymore.

“Oh, will you stop that,” Aziraphale snaps one day, because of some trivial thing, and Crowley almost looks… triumphant.

Aziraphale deflates immediately, worried to no end by that look.

“I apologize. I shouldn’t have yelled, Crowley.”

A complicated face, yet again, but it vanishes into blankness all too quickly.

“You absolutely should have. You’re fed up with me. Act like it.”

“I’m not fed up with you.”

_I could never be._

_Not for long, at least._

_Because I…_

“Just leave me alone, angel.”

All breath is gone from his lungs so suddenly it takes a moment to readjust, even if there’s no need for him to continuously inhale air in order to survive.

“I – “

“Leave.”

“I could be quiet.”

He has really said that, this humiliating thing.

Aziraphale lets the humiliation burn through him for a moment, then lets it go. For Crowley, he’s not above humiliating himself.

It doesn’t help, however. Or maybe it does?

Crowley still sends him away, but with something akin to desperation on his face.

If only those blasted shades would vanish, Aziraphale could know for sure.

He turns to go, defeated, but is stopped by Crowley’s voice.

“Oi, you bastard. Give me back those sunglasses right now.”

Oh no, he must have…. accidentally… that hasn’t happened since forever.

“I apologize,” he murmurs, without turning around. “I think they’re gone.”

He sees to it that he gets out of there.

~---~

“Aziraphaaaaale!”

Crowley sounds incredibly angry; knocks at the bookstore door hard enough to make the ‘Closed’ sign tumble to the ground.

Aziraphale has frozen over his books of account in shock.

It’s very late, the room only illuminated by the small lamp he kept on when he decided to try and distract himself with the dreariness of bookkeeping.

In the meantime, Crowley has snapped his fingers to open the doors and now stands in front of him, a picture of fury.

Nevertheless, Aziraphale almost laughs.

There’s a pair of pink-rimmed children’s sunglasses perching precariously on Crowley’s nose, sliding down as the demon trembles in his anger.

“It’sss not funny!” he rages. “They’re all gone. Every last pair of them.”

_Oh._

_Oh, hell._

_Brr, he hasn’t just thought that._

“I looked for hours. Hours! I went through every shop in London.”

As funny as this might possibly seem later, Aziraphale wishes very much he knew a trick to calm down this demon right now. It's just… Crowley so rarely gets cross with him. Well, all the time, but usually they bicker.

This is not that.

And he has the sinking feeling it’s not about sunglasses either.

“How could you?”

Crowley is spitting the words.

“Crowley. Please, I, I’m so sorry, I did not do it consciously. Therefore, I cannot undo it.”

The pink sunglasses fly at his face.

Aziraphale ducks at the last second.

“Oh, he _cannot_ , he says.”

The tone is snide, but there’s nothing covering Crowley’s eyes anymore, and his eyes scream _hurt_.

“There are so many things you cannot do, angel.”

It comes out almost as a sob, and seeing him like this is another thing that Aziraphale cannot, just cannot stand.

“I love you.”

He blurts it out, just like that, his conclusion from the end of the world.

He hadn’t meant to say it like this.

“What?”

Crowley screams the word, then repeats it, very quietly.

Aziraphale takes one, two, careful steps around his table.

“I love you. I… I can do that, at least.”

“You do not.”

Impossibly, Crowley looks even more hurt, and he remains so very quiet, which makes it worse when he adds,

“You love everyone.”

The last word, he spits, like a curse.

“Not like I love you.”

There, he has said it again. Aziraphale feels positively giddy, would break out into a smile if it wasn’t for the terrible hurt still lingering on his demon’s dear face.

“No, no, I don’t believe you, don’t be cruel, angel…”

Crowley is babbling desperately, not looking at him anymore, and Aziraphale feels like crying, the mood swing giving him whiplash.

In fact, the tears are already streaming down his face.

He had envisioned them slowly growing closer, closer still than they already were, until one day he would say it.

This is all wrong now.

And Crowley is turning away from him, hiding his face in his hands.

As if in a trance, Aziraphale sees himself reach out for the bony shoulder blades that are sticking out sharply. The always-slouching Crowley is keeping himself very straight now, which only serves to make him look more fragile.

When his hands touch Crowley’s back, the demon goes still.

They’ve both stopped breathing.

They are so very human in this.

Aziraphale knows he can never let go, not after this touch.

Crowley is a pillar of salt under his hands.

“My dear, dear boy…” Aziraphale whispers, and he still doesn’t know what he’s doing, only that he is compelled to do it.

His fingers start drawing lines, his mouth keeps talking.

“My dear.”

At that, Crowley lets out a sharp breath.

“Are you… you are serious.”

It comes out half as a question, even after he starts again during the middle of it.

Aziraphale is quite taken aback by it.

“Yes, of course I’m serious.”

Crowley shrugs off his hands, rounds on him in one swift motion.

“Of course? Of course?! After six thousand years, suddenly, it’s _of course_?”

He stills just as abruptly as the outburst had come, a sudden tenderness in his eyes that Aziraphale does not deserve.

His hands frame Aziraphale’s face, the thumbs wiping away tears almost forcefully before he gentles.

“Don’t cry, angel. I hate to see you cry.”

 _This kindness might just kill me_ , Aziraphale thinks, nonsensically.

He has to pull himself together.

It is so difficult, because of what he must say.

Never in his eternal life has he made such a mess of things.

It’s a miracle Crowley is still here.

For how long, however, for how long?

Nothing for it.

Quietly, Aziraphale begins.

“Crowley, you must believe me, I never meant to hurt you so. I did not know I was. It is… oh, my dear, it is unforgivable and if you’ll leave I – “

He cannot go on.

Crowley is leaning in, his face filling up the entirety of his vision, his eyes almost golden, shining too brightly and –

And then he’s kissing him.

Aziraphale makes an utterly embarrassing noise. A shriek, almost.

He could not care less.

It makes the lips against his curl into the briefest of smiles, before they press in again. And again.

“Crowley.”

Aziraphale whispers the name reverentially, like a prayer, and does not feel blasphemous for it.

It’s… later.

Time has lost all meaning for now.

At some point, Crowley had pulled back the minimal amount required in order to lean their foreheads together.

He doesn’t reply.

Doesn’t move.

With dismay, Aziraphale realises he has been clutching onto Crowley’s arms hard enough to leave bad bruises. He releases them quickly and Crowley… spooks. There is no other word for it.

He flinches, stiffens, pleads.

“No, please, please – “

Aziraphale reacts instinctively, buries his hands in wild red hair, kisses him, kisses him again, soothingly.

Crowley quietens, sighs into his mouth.

It’s different, kissing instead of being kissed.

He had witnessed it so many times over the years, read about it in all conceivable permutations, that it had seemed almost meaningless after a while.

It did not prepare him for the real thing.

Not at all.

It makes you soar, this bliss of pure feeling.

~---~

It’s later still.

They’re on Aziraphale’s bed, which had miraculously manifested in the middle of the bookshop, one of the shelves bending slightly out of the way to make room.

They’re on the bed, intertwined.

Not that they had… done anything.

Although Aziraphale would not be averse to it.

It’s not time, though, what with Crowley being so cautious.

“You can trust me. I will not change my mind.”

Aziraphale whispers the words into Crowley’s neck, lips brushing skin.

It’s easy, to talk like this, so he continues.

“I will ever be sorry it took me so long – “

“For God’s sake, stop apologising.”

Crowley’s voice hiccups a little on the second word, and all Aziraphale can think is that it’s endearing.

“Not until you believe it,” he replies, a little defiantly.

He pushes himself up on his arms, so he can catch Crowley’s eyes.

His demon is looking at him fondly.

“It has taken you six thousand years to… I mean, you can give me a few hours to adjust.”

He doesn’t even sound wistful right now, is the thing, but an overwhelming wave of guilt hits Aziraphale anyway.

Mindful of the fact that he’s been asked not to apologize, he turns away, to hide his expression of sorrow.

“Angel, angel…” Crowley coos, and, oh God, doesn’t he know he’s making this worse?

He has been so thoughtlessly cruel to Crowley. And then, also thoughtfully cruel, because he realised over a hundred years ago now, didn’t he? And never said anything. What does that make him? He…

He can’t breathe. There’s not enough air.

“Angel. Stop breathing. Stop.”

With a shudder, he does so. Terrible advice for humans, that would be, but it works like a charm on him.

He comes back to himself; realises that Crowley has wound himself around him like… well, like a snake, should be the obvious answer, but it’s more of a long-limbed monkey right now, one of those that hold on and don’t let go.

“Don’t do that again,” he murmurs into Aziraphale’s hair.

“I’ll try not to.”

Another layer of guilt adds itself, this one for being so selfish, for worrying Crowley. Again. Again and again.

“I’ve made a right mess of things,” he gives word to his thought from earlier.

Crowley… chuckles.

“You know I’ll be teasing you forever about that.”

“Of course you will.”

There’s hurt still lurking in both of them, but they’re getting there.

~---~

In the morning, Crowley wakes him with a shout.

He has stepped on the pink sunglasses.

“Ow, ow, ow.”

Aziraphale has to smile.

How can he not, when Crowley’s jumping around on one foot.

“Bastard,” his demon hisses when he notices, and Aziraphale will forever take that as a compliment.

“Where did you get them anyway?” he asks idly, as he watches Crowley kick the shards away with a vicious sort of satisfaction.

“Had to steal them off a little girl.”

Seeing Aziraphale’s disapproving look, he adds,

“’S your fault, really.”

Blushes. He has never learned how to control blushes.

Crowley seems to like them, though, so it’s not all bad.

“I should try to remedy that, shouldn’t I,” Aziraphale murmurs, bashfully.

Undoing accidental miracles is tricky, but he sure can tr –

The radio behind the counter clicks on, reminding him that he’d usually open the shop at this hour.

Over the light crackle of static, a bemused-sounding announcer informs them:

_< After a mysterious shortage, sunglasses are back in stock in Britain this morning. Not that we need them, with this downpour.>_

They look at each other and laugh.

“Stay in?”

“With pleasure, my dear.”

~---~

It follows, logically, that if they stay in, their minds might wander to certain… activities.

“You can’t even say it,” Crowley accuses.

Aziraphale smiles sweetly at him.

“Sex, Crowley.”

He watches with interest as pupils dilate. No glasses to hide behind and play it cool.

“We could have sex.”

“Um, yeah.”

Crowley sounds nervous, and Aziraphale knows his bravado will leave him very quickly if Crowley stays that way. Oh, it already has.

“We don’t have to…?” he ventures.

“No, no, no…” Crowley’s protests and takes a quick step forwards, presses him into the nearest bookshelf.

“That’s not what I meant,” he murmurs directly into his ear, hot breath tickling.

His voice has gone very deep, and Aziraphale closes his eyes, slumps against the bookshelf, enjoys the sensation of Crowley following, pressing in even closer.

Opens his eyes again with a start to check that all the blinds are closed.

They are.

Crowley smirks at him and he lets his eyes flutter shut once more.

“It’s just… do you know what to do?”

Now his voice has gone high, in that way only Crowley can sound when he asks a question.

Aziraphale smiles lightly, without opening his eyes.

“Theoretically; but I’m sure I’ll manage.”

He leans in for a long kiss.

They’ve already gotten good at that part, he thinks, as he lets his mouth wander lower, down a sharp jawbone, until it lands on Crowley’s Adam’s apple, which makes his demon gasp wonderfully.

Crowley has not forgotten the thread of the conversation, though, picks it up again when the kisses taper off slowly. For now. Aziraphale keeps his face buried in Crowley’s neck for a little longer.

“Theoretically?”

Crowley seems amused, but also honestly curious.

“Books”, Aziraphale murmurs. “Books only, I’m afraid.”

“You never watched?”

And now he sounds incredulous.

“Pervert.”

“Proudly.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

One day, Crowley will say it back.

Aziraphale can wait.

Six thousand years and more, if he has to. It would only be fair.

But then, Crowley kisses him again – softly, sweetly – and he thinks, perhaps, he won’t have to wait very long at all.

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Almost forgot to mention: The song referenced by Aziraphale is, of course, Joni Mitchell's _Big Yellow Taxi_.


End file.
